 | Tracklist:
1. Rainbow Blood
2. Stags, Aircraft, Kings and Secretaries
3. Palimpsest, Pt. 1
4. Chimeras
5. Dungeoneering
6. Palimpsest, Pt. 2
7. Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight
8. Harmony in Blue, Pts. 1-4
9. Radio Spiricom
10. Whitecaps of White Noise, Pt. 1
11. Whitecaps of White Noise, Pt. 2
12. Blood Rainbow
13. Whitecaps of White Noise, Pt. 1
14. Whitecaps of White Noise, Pt. 2
15. Blood Rainbow
Release Date: 2007 | |
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On 6 Lists
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3 of 3 thought this review was well written
Quietly sift back to those wonderful days where disorder and chaos were allowed in your life that, for the most part, has been otherwise stagnant and propelled by the whims of order. Personally, my mind drifts to those blissful days of kindergarten, where I was allowed to use pictures in any array, what the teachers delightfully called a collage. In those days, the organized chaos of images liberated me finally from all of the rules and instructions that I fancied to be irritating at the time. And now that my true youth sits idle, it is not often that a piece of music can capture that beautiful chaos. So then, once you have drifted back from that memory of organized chaos, think then that Tim Hecker’s Harmony in Ultra Violet, in its essence, is a collage of chaotic noise in small still frames disguised as songs. It is not chaotic in a violent manner, nor is it ambient music that is simply masqueraded in endless drones; Tim Hecker creates a masterful work here that is distinctive and breathtakingly beautiful.
For those of which who are not familiar with contemporary ambient composers (and I’m working under the impression that you aren’t), many of today’s ambient music relies on the soft atmospheres and the heavy usage of drones, and usually there is a prevalent atmosphere that defines a particular album. Tim Hecker’s experimentation with these contemporary standards is what makes Harmony in Ultra Violet more of an expansive journey that is surprising in its brevity yet is still able to convey a variety of wonderfully deeply euphoric and melancholic moods into one defining work. In that respect, as the title suggests, the instant washes of white noise and floating melodies all sing in harmony. As most ambient composer’s have the habit of doing, Hecker gives words to emotions that we hold so clandestine in our minds. As mentioned before, these emotions can begin at total bliss and end at deep melancholic contemplation. Hecker is able to equip a vox with which to paint a collage of images that an ordinary person views inside of their mind. In other words, he is able to evoke a variety of images that strike the listener in an affecting way. Every song, or piece, in Harmony in Ultra Violet simultaneously leads into one another, so the experience is perpetuated, with each individual piece seen as an individual image that adds up – as stated before – a strikingly beautiful collage of noise.
There is no emphasis on individual songs, and Harmony in Ultra Violet is meant to be listened to in its entirety. Still, there is no need to be daunted by this because every piece is short and sweet without the long drawl that many other ambient composers and post-rock bands self-righteously indulge in. With that in mind, due to the simultaneous nature of Harmony in Ultra Violet, the record displays itself as one giant song, with different fragmented ideas separated to form one distinctive work of art. There is a slow progression to each track, and that is evident in the contrasting moods of inspiringly glorious tracks like “Rainbow Blood” and “Chimeras” in comparison to the harsh white noise of “Radio Spiricom”, “White Caps of White Noise I”. In addition to this, the “Harmony in Blue” series which is separated into 4 distinct movements, demonstrates the more contemplative and quiet moments of the record. With that, Hecker constructs a record that teases the listener. This is because by the end of the record, the disparate ideas coalesce into one singular form of music that seems to only begin to tell a story. Tim Hecker demonstrates that he is an ambient composer in the truest sense of the word – being able to add a sense of originality in a genre that has the tendency to sometimes be one-dimensional. Instead, different sounds of twirling synths stand above like pillars reflecting in and off of reverberating walls of white noise. Distortion rises up like smoke and the echoes that last conjure up moods of melancholy, beauty, genius, death, bleakness – a true landscape of sound with different nuances like mountains peaking out of the ground. Some sounds are soft and warm and others cold and dark.
Listening to Harmony in Ultra Violet is similar to imagining a silent film that is grainy and poetic, with a degenerating industrial landscape, set to the backdrop of grey sailboats that sway slowly by the wind. This is my personal image, but for every individual, there may be a separate and distinctive image that is evoked, and this is the true beauty of Harmony in Ultra Violet. It draws you into a reverie. The record does not suggest anything, it simply sings without words in a poetic way that allows different interpretations. It can be as subjective of a record as can be. And meanwhile, as Tim Hecker digs through records of William Basinski and Brian Eno (God knows what his influences are) it is interesting to wonder if Tim Hecker wished to channel the chaotic energy of our youth into one record. He probably didn’t, but it’s a nice thought – between the relapse of collages and sprawled images wasted on the floors of better days.
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